How the iPod Made Apple Relevant Again

Those of us who remember the Walkman, the discman, the mini disc, the MP3 players and then the iPod, truly understand the impact it made.

I can still remember, in the pre-iPod Walkman era, the fashion was to do almost everything to conceal the headphone wires but when the iPod came out showing the white wires were almost like a status symbol.

I’m so glad I lived my teenage years during the iPod era. It was honestly a beautiful time.

It’s astonishing to think that there is an entire generation that has grown up without immense fascination with iPod.

0:00: 🔑 The original iPod was designed and manufactured in a few months and credited to an obscure man named Ken Kramer. 3:12: 🎵 The rise of digital music and the MP3 format disrupted the music industry, leading to the development of portable MP3 players. 6:31: 💽 Apple developed the iPod with a small form factor and high capacity hard drive, using the iconic mechanical scroll wheel for easy navigation. 9:29: 💽 The iPod was developed by a team led by Fidel, using components from various companies. It had a minimalist design and became a status symbol. 12:41: 🎵 Apple's iPod revolutionized the music industry, selling over 400 million units and paving the way for the iPhone. Recap by Tam

I remember back in the late 90s, a friend had a portable CD player that could also play the MP3 files on a data CD, that held hundreds of songs per disk. My mind was blown.

I am one of those people that collects iPods and still uses them. I got a bit surprised by the small resurgence they've had in the last couple of years. They're still great little devices, especially the classic ones, with a few upgrades.

I remember saving up for the iPod Nano 3rd Gen as a kid. It wasn't much but for that brief moment, I felt like the coolest kid on the block who didn't have an iPhone and immediately loaded it with all the songs I got off of Limewire.

Right now the DEX has a huge glitch If you are swapping you are getting like x 7 I done a vldeo

I swear to god ColdFusion brings out the best videos. By now we all have close to 1000 ColdFusion videos in our pockets like how Steve Jobs said we would have 1000 songs with the Ipod. It's ironic saying this as I like Android.

Sidebar, Apple computers had to get permission at the beginning to use the Apple name, at that time already owned by Apple Music formed by the Beatles. They were given permission on the condition that they never go into the music business. When they started iTunes, they had to negotiate again for their name, they could have potentially lost the use of the name Apple as a result.

One correction: MP3 format does introduce significant losses in fidelity of the original music. It was very compact, but to state that it didn't affect quality is just not correct.

Never owned one of these, but remember when MP3s were getting lots of attention. In the late 90s one person in my circle took some old PC parts and a DC to AC inverter and ran an old DOS machine in the trunk of his car. Every time the car powered up, the PC would boot up and the autoexec.bat would start MP3 playing. I think he had a 10GB or more of HDD. Long before the iPhone I had a flip phone with a micrSD card slot that played MP3s and had dual speaker as well as a headphone jack. It also had a camera and limited apps. I could get to my bank account in text on a very small screen.

I still have my iPod 6th generation, and it still boots and works. It was a gift from my daugther. I never thought ColdFusion would take me down to nostalgia lane so much one day :) Yet another great CF video, thanks!

I was a tween when iPods came out. They were easily the most popular device as a kid since the game boy color. By the time the second gen nano came out 90% of my friends and classmates had an iPod. They were truly integral to mid 2000s life.

i remember sony, samsung and other companies making great mp3 players with drag and drop music folders that were cheap, had good storage ability for large playlists and had a great sound quality, but were a pain in the ass to use sometimes if you were already sucked into the apple ecosystem and didnt own a pc which was more suited to the (not always essential) software involved in said devices

For my friends and I in middle school, the iPod was like a Nintendo Switch, as parents were reluctant on giving their kids expensive smartphones. We played games in the hall- and stairways. Fun times with the iPod.

Still got a 4rd gen iPod (2004) that works - black/white LCD screen and mechanical hard drive. Great machine and quite good audio quality, especially for the time. Good to hear the development story all in one spot. Now if only Apple could continue to innovate like this instead of taking away features we actually use like 3.5mm audio jacks...

I REALLY ABSOLUTELY miss that anticipation of what they were going to do with the next iPod!! My first one was the 30GB iPod Video for Christmas 2005!!! I felt like the man because not a lot of people had that new iPod at the time! Now days with Apple Music, Apple ruined the way iTunes would allow you to customize your playlists individually instead of just syncing all of it like now. I absolutely hate that they did this to the playlist feature. Sometimes my artwork doesn’t show on one device and sometimes my playlists get duplicated and this infuriates me because they could have just easily made Apple Music for only Music and playlists like iTunes and moved the iPhone updaters to finder. I know they could have kept the playlist features the same. If it aint broke don’t fix it!! This time they broke it instead of fixing it!! I understand why they had to separate the iTunes store but I hate that Apple Music and Finder are required to keep my iPod running with music and playlists and I refuse to keep a separate mac just for iTunes of old!! 😑

I remember all of Apple's history. I'm roughly the age of Steve Jobs (as he would be, if he was still alive), and even used a friend's Apple II, when it was still a new product. It was the iMac, that put Apple back into the "black", but if they just stayed there, then they would just be one of many, and would eventually go belly up. The iPod did differentiate Apple, as it was a unique product. I do remember the Diamond Rio, and it was only selling in the $50 to $70 range around the time the iPod came out. At the time, I thought its storage capacity was adequate, as we were use to less than a hours worth of songs. No one needed to store, your whole music collection. So we thought. The good thing of the iPod was that it could store any type of file, and later versions had larger storage and could play video. I made a power bank (before power banks were a thing) for a friend, so he could watch whole movies on his iPod on long plane flights. Playing a video, an iPod would drain its battery in less than an hour. That power bank gave you 5 hours of video viewing time.